It's For Sail: 54) Arrived Oahu for delivery prep

I very much miss the old days of flying commercial. I have fond memories of a particular flight to Hawaii wherein I let one of the flight attendants know that I was a pilot and would appreciate an opportunity to see the cockpit. A couple hours into the flight an attendant alerted me that the Captain wanted to see me. Needless to say, the surrounding passengers were a little startled.

I made my way forward to the cockpit and was greeted warmly and invited in. Well, there was no seat for me so I just kinda stood there. But, it was great. We chatted about what types of planes I was flying and I commented that their office was better than mine and that was that. A great memory.

Visits to the cockpit while at cruising altitude are a thing of the past and I always wonder what's going on up there while we are underway.

My current flight out of San Jose to Oahu was uneventful, to say the least. The only turns made were the initial lefts out of SFO and the landing sequence at Oahu of turning left onto downwind, right onto base and then right onto final. The bumpy ride on final was the classic Hawaiian tradewind hello and it felt great. Coming in over the numbers and feeling and seeing the wingtips rise and fall got my heart going but in the last moments while in ground-effect an eerie calm settled in for a greaser; a perfect landing. And then, reverse thrust.... I miss flying as pilot in command.

Once on the ground my tunnel-vision turned on. I was determined to meet the other guys on the crew at my baggage claim and head to the boat. After all, we had some work to do to get the boat ready for departure but at the time of our meeting we still were not quite sure what that work was.

Dragging my happy-ass to baggage claim I immediately met up with Clive and Mark. I was very confused at this point as to who I just met. For some reason Bill's Facebook page had a picture of Mark that pretty much led me to believe it was Bill. So, I thought I was meeting Bill on the curb when it was really Mark. We dragged our gear to the curb and waited for Bill to bring the car around. I had (2) fairly good sized bags and a backpack and so did Clive. One bag was basically filled with all the gear needed to be on watch and the other was clothes and stuff.

I was not surprised but rather resigned to the little car that pulled up in front of us and out jumped Bill. A very tall Bill I might add in a tiny little car. We all did the meet-n-greet, loaded the car and got on our way.

Gib's house at Kaneoh'e Bay

So that you get the full effect of our transport, Bill had already made a trip to West Marine and inside the car was a packed life-raft and other gear.

But, who am I to complain. We were off to hit the road and travel across the island to Kaneoh'e Bay. The scenery here is always beautiful and the temperature was perfect.

We headed directly to Gib & Jackie's house to unload our gear and figure out a game-plan. Bill and Mark were staying in the attached Ohana and Clive and I would stay in the main house. This was a better deal than staying on the boat as it just was not ready yet and was quite a mess.

Guest room.

I think I got the best deal of all because I got the upstairs guest-room and Clive got the upstairs air mattress in the storage room.

We made a quick-turn around at the house and loaded their bright yellow truck with sails and headed down to the boat. Funny thing, Clive and Mark were reduced to driving the truck and Bill and I took the small car. Our heads actually hit the ceiling in the truck and the small car did not have that wonderful feature.


Mark at the wheel and Clive on the right at the Kaneoh'e Yacht Club.

Chasch Mer was tied to the end of a dock with plenty of room. From the second floor of the house you could look out at the docks and see her. We immediately got started working on the boat with no real direction. One item high on my list was to install the emergency rudder to make sure that it worked.

Sugar scoop with the rudder access plate removed.

The process involves removing the plug in the sugar scoop, attaching the rudder to the track mounted to the transom adjacent to the after-stay and sliding it through the hole into the water. Then the wood tiller is attached. All was well.

Some of the gear that we would take with us applied to the Transpac. We found a lot of sails on board and I figured we might as well pack them so they were ready to fly in case we needed them. The multi-colored sail on the dock is a symmetrical spinnaker and we wrapped it every few feet with rubber bands prior to bagging it. When hoisted the bands break when the kite fills. Wrapping these sails with rubber bands is very old school but effective. It is so uncommon that the bell used to put on the rubber bands is very rare nowadays. The bell is a plastic funnel that has rubber bands wrapped on one end. As the sail passes through the funnel every few feet a rubber band is slipped off the bell onto the sail. Where do the broken rubber bands go when the sail opens up during the hoist? Wow, that is such a good question.